Van - nj

In Vancouver he'd be our third pairing defenseman though. We know how much flak Ballard gets, and he doesn't make that much more than Tallinder. Ideally I think Vancouver would need a cheap reliable 3rd pairing defenseman to possibly replace Ballard in the event of a cap crunch, but Tallinder isn't really the best fit, I think.

EDIT: Although I think I misread capgeek, I originally thought he was making 3.75 mil. My bad.

To Vancouver, he is overpaid for the role he would play. However, his role on most teams is a second pairing guy, and he's not overpaid for what he brings in terms of that.

Kovalchuk's contract is great. 6.7 for one of the top players in the league is awesome as you don't have to worry about losing him to free agency. Luongo is the definition of a terrible contract... and NJ would never do this. Maybe if it was for Kesler, Edler and a first rounder.

Kovalchuk's contract is not terrible. Unless you also believe Luongo's contract is terrible. A $6.7 M cap hit for the rest of the career of an elite sniper who is fitting into the Devils' game more and more every day, is an excellent deal.

kovalchuk is overrated as hell, great talent but does not play both ends of the rink.

guys like henrique is what the devils should build around not kovalchuk.

You haven't watched Kovy play in NJ, have you? He's no Selke winner, but his defensive game has improved by leaps and bounds. He backchecks regularly, he comes low to help with the breakout instead of flying the zone to cherry pick immediately, and he commits to playing positional defence instead of floating. All of these things are dramatic improvements over Atlanta Kovy.

He even plays a regular shift on the PK now, and he was a big part of the Devils' modern record setting PK last season. The Devils scored more shorthanded goals when he was on the ice, than they had PP goals scored against them during the same amount of ice time. So over a full season, he was a plus player in terms of goal difference on the PK. That's impressive.

And the Devils are planning to build around guys like Henrique, they've been doing that for 25 years with Lou at the helm. But having guys who can score is important too.

Suprised of all teams NJ fans don't understand the importance of quality goaltending.

you guys got it for like 2 decades.

Kovalchuk is no longer a one dimensional player, as I explained above.

We do understand the importance of quality goaltending. We are also aware that we have a good tandem locked up with NTCs for the next two years. There is no place for us to put Schneider unless we force Moose to retire. Why trade a franchise winger for a package featuring a goalie that we're going to stuff in the AHL for another two years?

I'm not even going to bother with the one-dimensional Kovalchuk stuff. Just foolish and stupid talk. I can understand if someone says his defensive game is questionable, but one-dimensional just makes people look like absolute morons.

Saugus, don't forget that Kovalchuk had a POSITIVE goal differential on the PK while playing regularly.

Kovalchuk's contract is only a minute factor in this. Any Canucks fan who thinks otherwise is a hippocrite, as well as wrong.

The OP would probably be close to fair value, but New Jersey needs more wingers, trading their franchise winger is the last thing they would do.

I would do the OP, as it makes a lot of sense for us. New Jersey...not so much.

In a market where there is a lot of money, the only thing that matters is the cap hit. For a team like Vancouver, they are getting a PPG player who controls the game when he's on the ice for 6.66 million, it's an absolute steal. The 11 million is irrelevant for a market like Vancouver, for the Devils, it's a bit of different story with the conflicting reports on ownership troubles and money issues. Whether it's actually bad or how bad it is, we will likely never know.

In a market where there is a lot of money, the only thing that matters is the cap hit. For a team like Vancouver, they are getting a PPG player who controls the game when he's on the ice for 6.66 million, it's an absolute steal. The 11 million is irrelevant for a market like Vancouver, for the Devils, it's a bit of different story with the conflicting reports on ownership troubles and money issues. Whether it's actually bad or how bad it is, we will likely never know.

What about the CBA clause to transfer part of the salary to teams (something like a max of 3 million)? Then we could send someone back and pay part of the salary for the duration of some of our "cap dump" players as an inclusion (ie Ballard for 1.2 million....he seems a lot better for that).

Focusing on that, what happened to Edler+Schneider for Kovy? Was that shot down due to both Brodeur and Hedberg (I'd gladly take Hedberg back....NTC though), or what?